


Ray Miles is Not a Yenta

by Quietbang



Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: First Time, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Humour, M/M, Matchmaking, everyone has a nice time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 14:16:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2814992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quietbang/pseuds/Quietbang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray Miles is too old for this shit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ray Miles is Not a Yenta

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carolinga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinga/gifts).



> Hi, carolinga- sorry I couldn't quite manage a fix-it, but Series 4 was too scary for me to finish and I thought it would be a bit disingenous to write a fix-it for a season I haven't seen! This is unrepentent fluff and set sometime after the end of Series 3. I hope you don't mind a Ray POV- I find him the most enjoyable character to write, and his complete exasperation with his romantically incompetent DI is precious. Happy Yuletide, and I hope you like it!

Ray Miles is too old for this shit.  


Not police work- they’re gonna have to drag him out of the station when his time comes, his corpse going stiff at his desk with a cup of tea clutched in his right hand.  
(

It’s possible that Ray has spent too much time imagining these particular events. Joe will cry, of course. So will Kent and Meg. Mansell will pour out an entire bottle of whiskey on his grave- a true sacrifice coming from him. They rename the incident room “The Ray Miles Memorial Room”.  
So what if it’s a bit self-absorbed, it’s better than thinking about dead girls or perfectly colour-sorted paperclips or whatever Joe uses to calm himself down in that pretty little head of his.)  


He’s _too bloody old_ to watch two people who obviously like each other dance around it like blushing virgins. Which, in fairness, they might well be- neither one of them has ever seemed to have a successful relationship, and, let’s be clear—if they had, Miles would _know_.  


He cracks his neck and looks across the incident room, where Kent is pretending to filter through CCTV footage but is in reality mooning helplessly over his screen in Joe’s general direction. His office door is open, so Ray has a perfectly clear view of Joe sitting at his desk, pretending to read a case file but in reality shooting looks so frequently across the room at Kent that he might as well just give up and stare openly.  


Ray resists the temptation to bang his head against his desk. It’s a temptation he deals with a lot, in this job.  


Thing is—Ray knows that thirty years ago he’dve done the same. He’d met Judy at grammar school, had been a Junior Constable while she was doing her O-levels, and even then—she’d had to invite herself round for tea with his Mum, and one day when he got home from training Mum had fixed him with a stern look and ordered him to ask “that nice girl” out for drinks.  


So, he may be old, and he may be a busybody. But never let it be said that Ray hasn’t been where Joe and Kent are now. It might be different if you’re both men, he supposes, but he doubts it. Men are idiots, regardless of who they date.  


A hand rests on his shoulder. “What are _you_ staring at?”  


He jumps, caught in the act of surveillance, before he realises it’s just Meg. “Just the loverboy over there,” he mutters, gesturing with his chin towards Kent, who has completely given up on pretending to work.  


“I’m waiting for him to start drooling,” she mutters back. “I wish one of them would just _say_ something, for the love of God.”  


“Pigs will fly before that happens,” he says. “Or we’ll get a straight-up domestic, whichever comes first.”  


“Miles,” she reprimands.  


“I’m just saying. Never thought I’d start wishing for some poor bird to get pushed down a flight of stairs, but this last week has just about done it.”  


She squeezes his shoulder sympathetically. “I’d take some dirty drugs, myself. Heroin cut with rat poison rather than a fictional monster.”  


“Yeah, but what would Buchan do then?”  


“Take some well-deserved time off and give the rest of us a break from his brilliance, I imagine.”  


Ray smiles and turns his attention back to Kent, who is now looking sadly off into the distance. “Never mind that, what are we gonna do about _him_?”  


Meg studies him carefully. “Hope he comes to his senses and either says something, or goes out and finds a nice boy who isn’t obsessed with bringing murderers to justice?”  


Ray scratches his chin as he considers this. “No, I can’t see him doing that, can you?”  


She shakes her head and smiles. “A girl can dream.”  


“Dream all you want, I think we should do something.”  


“Raymond Miles, you will do no such thing.”  


Ray glares at her. “Who told you my name?”  


She smirks and claps him on the back. “You should stop sending me on spa days with your wife if you don’t want her telling me things. We’ve got a dinner date next week, I’m looking forward to finding out more of your domestic shortcomings.”  


“We’ve worked together for ten years, Meg, you know all my domestic shortcomings.” 

Like not making more coffee when he’s the one who finishes it. Or remembering to replace the loo roll. Or putting dishes in the dish rack still sopping wet—alright, maybe he has a lot of domestic shortcomings.  


“Well, that’s good. Someone’s got to keep you humble. Now you leave those nice boys alone, Ray. They’ll figure something out.”  


She squeezed his shoulder and went back to her desk.  


She had a point. Maybe. Maybe he’s become a busybody in his old age. He isn’t Joe’s Nan. The boy can figure this out for himself.  


The thing is—he _can’t_. If Joe had shown any consistent ability to initiate or reciprocate romantic attention he wouldn’t care so much. But the boy is so emotionally constipated he wouldn’t be able to shit the stick out of his own ass without apologising to it for disturbing it, and Kent, well—they all dote on Kent. He’s a babe in arms, practically, and even after all of this—after being slashed in the arse by the ‘Kray’ firm’s lackeys, after watching countless grieving families confront their losses, after going on patrol with _Mansell_ \-- he still manages to seem innocent. Gentle, really, in a way that worries Ray, because coppers don’t get to be gentle and stay that way, not for long. Not alone. Not without someone to come home too. Kent still lives in a bedsit, he’d discovered when he drove him home from the hospital. Has roommates like any kid his age, a student and an artist who seemed to disapprove quite vocally of his job.  


He calls his mother once a week, always at the same time. At work, if he needs to, if it’s half eight on a Friday night and they haven’t made it home yet. Joe never reprimands him for it, even though is anyone else tried it- if Meg called her boys every night to tuck them in or Ray called Judy to check on the baby before she went to bed- they’d get their ear chewed off. Well, ‘chewed off’ is probably too violent a phrase to describe anything that Joe would ever let himself do, but he would certainly have a quiet word about allocation of police time and resources, and it would certainly _feel_ like you’d had your ear chewed off.  


That’s telling enough, isn’t it? Bending the rules are how Joe shows love, after all.  


He consults with Judy that night over tea, explaining the situation between forkfuls of peas and breaking up arguments between the boys. Ryan is 17 now, in College but still coming home on Fridays to have his washing done. Ray had hoped that this new-found freedom and adulthood might’ve made the boy grow up a bit and stop fighting with his brother, but it was becoming apparent that this was not the case. He thought of reminding the boy that when he was his age he had already been engaged to his mum, but, well—it didn’t help. Perhaps he should have Linda talk to him. She was across the city, nursing at Northwick Park and with a baby on the way, but she’d always had a rapport with her younger brothers—more another mum than a sister to pick on them.  


He considers that with half his mind, the other half firmly occupied with the Kent Problem. He does the washing up while Judy puts little Ella down to sleep, and then they both sit down.  


“Why don’t you just talk to them?” She asks gently, her soft smile clearly humouring him.  


“D’you think I haven’t tried that? Neither of them has the sense God gave a horse.”  


He loves Judy with all of his heart, but this is what comes of being married to a social worker. She thinks that all problems can be solved by _talking_.  


Ray’s a doing man, himself.  


“What if I tricked them?”  


“Ray, no—“  
“

I’ll say that there’s a team pub night, my treat. To celebrate the end of the last case. Then when they both show up, they’ll be the only ones there, and they’ll have to make conversation. Hopefully a pint or two will lower their inhibitions, and then _one_ of them will say something.”  


“Ray, are you sure-“  


“I’ll wait outside the pub, just in case it all goes wrong and I have to do damage control.”  


“Ray, this really doesn’t sound—“  


“Stop worrying, woman, it’ll be brilliant. Desperate times call for desperate measures, after all.”  


Judy sighs and takes a sip of her tea. “If you say so, Ray. I don’t promise not to say ‘I told you so’.”  


“I’d never dream of it, sweetheart.”  


The plan goes off without a hitch. At first, Joe is tentative about going out to socialise when there’s still so much paperwork to be done after the last case, but Ray emphasises the team-building aspect, and eventually he relents.  
(It’s not really a lie. If Kent and Joe stop mooning about each other, it _would_ improve morale.)  
He checks his watch as he waits in a secluded corner of the pub, a newspaper hiding his face. 5 to 8. Both of the boys are scrupulously punctual, so it won’t be long now.  


As his pint arrives, he sees Kent walk in. He scans the tables for a sign of his colleagues, and Ray quickly raises the newspaper to hide his face. From the corner of his eye, he sees Kent shrug his shoulders and sit down at an empty table.  


He pulls out his phone—shit, Ray had forgotten about the phone. He was probably about to text Meg, or Mansill, to ask them where they were. Shit, shit, shit.  


He goes to pull out his own phone and let Meg and Mansill know of the plan, when the door swings open and Joe tentatively walks in, his shoulders tight. When he sees Kent sitting down, a bit of the tension leaves and he actually _smiles_.  


Watching out of the corner of his eye, Ray is dismayed to realise that he can’t actually hear anything that’s going on. They’re both smiling, though, and that can only be good. Their first round arrives, and Ray adjusts his positioning so he can see them more clearly.  


Kent is saying something, his eyes sparkling with laughter. Joe smiles, and he takes off his suit jacket and lets it rest on the back of his chair.  
Now Kent is waving a hand in the air for emphasis, saying something quite emphatically. It flies just a bit too close to Joe’s head, and he reaches out and grabs it, stilling its motion mid-air.  
They both blush, and Joe quickly orders another drink. 

Another round in, and they are both flushed and happy-looking, and when Joe laughs at one of Kent’s jokes the boy lights up like the sun. Joe looks at him and smiles silently, and then leans in and says something. Something that makes Kent blush deeply and spill his pint.  


Joe leans in and rubs at his shirt with a napkin.  


And then—oh yes, perfect, that’ll show Meg and Judy—well, then they’re kissing.  


Ray lets out an audible noise of triumph, and both of their heads swivel in his direction, causing him to accidentally make eye contact with each in turn.  


Oh, shit.  


Joe stands up with wobbly dignity and stalks over to his corner. “I thought,” he says carefully, ”That I’d told you to stop meddling in my personal affairs. I was serious about that, you know.”  


“Oh, come off it. You didn’t seem too unhappy with my meddling a minute ago.”  


Kent blushes deeply.  


“No,” Joe says, “No, it was most satisfactory, and that is the only reason I am not absolutely furious with you right now.”  


“Well, good,” Ray says as he pushes himself up from the booth, groaning as he hears his back crack. “Since you both seem pretty happy, I’ll just be leaving you to your affairs. Have a good night fellas. And take a bloody cab home, y’hear me?”  


Whistling a jaunty tune, he pulls a tenner out of his pocket and leaves it, crumpled, on the sticky Formica table.  


At the door, he pauses and winks. “Have a good night, boys. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”  


Joe glares at him. “You better go now, Ray, or Kent might have to arrest me for aggravated assault. And that would be a terrible end to what has turned out to be quite a pleasant evening.” 

Ray smiles as Kent blushes even more deeply. “Say no more, I’m on my way. Oh, and Kent? You’re welcome.”


End file.
